The three Driftrunners were catapulted clear off the edge of the upper turnaround—shooting horizontally out into the sky, past the two hunched figures—after which the three trucks fell a thousand feet straight down into the ravine below.
It was then that an ominous rumbling came from somewhere
above Schofield.
The gigantic body of snow resting on the mountain above the Sukhoi's perch was shifting, cracking, starting to . . .
Slide.
'Move!' Schofield yelled, climbing up the ladder.
The sliding body of snow began to gather speed.
'Quickly! Into the bomb bay!' Knight yelled.
Book and Mother squeezed through the small cockpit and into the tight space behind it: a bomb storage bay that had been converted into a . . . holding cell.
'Just get in!' Knight yelled from behind them. 'I'll be joining you!'
Knight squeezed in with them. Schofield jumped into the cockpit last of all, climbed into the rear gunner's seat, looked up.
The vertically-sliding snowdrift had taken on the appearance of a crashing ocean wave: blasting explosions of white preceding the full weight of the avalanche.
Knight called forward, 'Er, Rufus . . . !'
'Already on it, Boss!' the large man in the front seat hit the throttles and the Sukhoi rose.
'Faster . . .' Schofield said.
The avalanche came rushing down at them, tumbling, rumbling, smashing, crashing.
The Sukhoi lifted higher, hovering for a moment before it powered out over the edge of the cliff just as the avalanche rushed past it, the falling wall of snow rushing by with a colossal roar, gobbling up the turnaround in a single enormous bite before rumbling past the floating black fighter jet and disappearing into the abyss below.
'Now that was close,' Knight said.
Three minutes later, the Sukhoi S-37 landed in a clearing on the Afghan side of the mountain, about a mile away from Schofield's
parked Yak-141.
Schofield, Knight, Book and Mother all climbed out, while the pilot—an enormous bushy-bearded individual whom Knight introduced simply as 'Rufus'—killed the engines.
Schofield walked a few yards away to regather his thoughts. A lot had happened today and he wanted to clear his head.
His earpiece crackled.
'Scarecrow, it's me, Fairfax. You there?
'Yeah, I'm here.'
'Listen. I got a couple of things for you. A few facts on those USAMRMC guys on your list, and some big stuff on that Black Knight guy, most of it from the FBI and ISS Most Wanted lists. You got a moment?'1
'Yeah,' Schofield said.
'Jesus, Scarecrow, this Knight guy is bad news . . .'
In his office deep beneath the Pentagon, Dave Fairfax sat bathed in the glow of his computer screen. In the eastern United States, it was just hitting 4 a.m., October 26, and the office was quiet.
On Fairfax's screen were two photos of Aloysius Knight: the first was a portrait shot of a clean-shaven young man in US Army dress uniform, smiling. The second was a blurred long-distance shot of Aloysius Knight holding a shotgun in each hand and running hard.
'All right,' Fairfax said, reading. 'His real name is Knight,
Aloysius K. Knight, 33 years old, 6 feet 1 inch tall, 185 pounds. Eyes: brown. Hair: black. Distinguishing features: known to wear amber-tinted anti-flash glasses because of an eye abnormality known as acute retinal dystrophy. It means that his retinas are too sensitive to handle natural light, hence the need for tinted glasses.'
As Fairfax's voice came through his earpiece, Schofield gazed over at Knight, standing over by the Sukhoi with the others, with his two holstered shotguns, his yellow glasses, his all-black fighting uniform.
Fairfax went on: 'Former member of Delta Team 7 which is regarded as the best within Delta, an elite within an elite. Reached the rank of captain, but found guilty of treason against the United States in absentia in 1998 after he betrayed a mission he was leading in Sudan. Intelligence sources say that Knight was paid $2 million by a local Al-Qaeda cell to inform them of an impending US assault on their arms depot. Thirteen Delta operatives died as a result of the forewarning Knight gave.
'He disappeared after that, but was rediscovered eighteen months later living in Brasilia. A team of six Navy SEAL commandos was sent in to liquidate him. Knight killed them all, then mailed their heads back to the SEAL training facility at Coronado Naval Base in San Diego.
'Now known to be working as a freelance international bounty hunter. Get this. Apparently, insurance companies keep track of these things for kidnap scenarios: he's rated by Carringtons of London as the second-best bounty hunter in the world.''
'Only second? Who's the best?'
'That Demon Larkham guy I told you about before. Wait a second, I'm not finished with Knight yet. ISS believes that in 2000, Knight tracked down and killed twelve Islamic terrorists who'd kidnapped the daughter of Russia's Deputy President, cut off four of her fingers, and demanded a ransom of US$100 million. Knight traced them to a terrorist training camp in the Iranian desert, went
there, razed the whole frigging camp to the ground, grabbed the girl—minus the fingers—and returned her to Moscow without the media getting a whiff of it. In return, it says here, the Russian government gave him . . . wait for it... a test-damaged Sukhoi S-37 jet fighter, plus refuelling privileges at any Russian base in the world. Apparently, the plane is known in bounty hunting circles as the Black Raven.'
'Black Raven, huh,' Schofield turned to look at the black Sukhoi S-37 standing nearby . . . and saw that Aloysius Knight was walking towards him.
7 tell you, Scarecrow,' Fairfax said, 'this is not the kind of guy you want hunting you.'
'Too late,' Schofield said. 'He's standing right in front of me.'
Schofield and Knight rejoined the others underneath the Black Raven.
Book II and Mother came up to Schofield.
'You all right?' Mother asked softly. 'Book told me what happened in Siberia. Excuse my French, Scarecrow, but what the fuck is happening here?'
'It's been a tough morning,' Schofield said, 'and a lot of people have died. Any idea what happened to Gant?'
'The last time I saw her was when those cocksuckers with the green laser sights came rocking in and I was knocked onto that conveyor belt—'
'She was taken,' a voice said from behind Mother.
It was Aloysius Knight.
'Taken by a bounty hunter named Demon Larkham and his men from IG-88.'
'How do you know that?' Book II asked.
'Rufus,' Knight nodded to his partner, the mountainously tall pilot.
With his great bushy beard, Rufus had a wide smiling face and earnest eyes. He hunched slightly, as if trying to diminish his seven-foot height. When he spoke, he spoke quickly and matter-of-factly, report-style.
'After I lowered Aloysius down the air vent,' he said, 'I went to hover over by the back entrance. I dropped a MicroDot aerosol charge onto the turnaround outside the exit tunnel—just like you told me to, Boss. Then I took up a hovering pattern about a mile away—again just like you told me to.
'About five minutes before you all came charging out, a great big Chinook helicopter flanked by a couple of Lynx attack choppers landed on that turnaround. Then two LSVs and a Driftrunner came speeding out of the mine tunnel and shot straight up the ramp of the Chinook and into its belly. Then the Chinook lifted off and headed out over the hills, back toward Afghanistan.'